Call it the 'Edward Snowden' impact if you must, but there's no doubt that insight on the NSA's activities have technology companies working overtime to restore and regain trust. Following Google's lead to encrypt email communication, Yahoo will now do similarly by crafting a secure email system that should go online in 2015. The platform will be fortified in a way that Yahoo Mail is not currently, and will reportedly make it "nearly impossible for hackers or government officials to read users' messages." Of course, suggesting such a thing will only incite hackers to attempt to prove them wrong, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

It's one thing to see small, niche email systems adopt this sort of mindset, but for major public companies such as Yahoo and Google? That's serious progress. Once implemented, it'll even prevent Yahoo itself from reading emails as they're typed, providing peace of mind for anyone concerned that their digital communications are being watched elsewhere.

This is likely just the second of many other balls to drop, with everything from email to texting to browser entry fields to be secured in ways that weren't previously in demand.